All I Believe Read online

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go back to the hotel. Nana and the ladies are going to be a while. We can sit by the pool and relax a bit before we get caught up in all the preparations for tonight.” He nodded in agreement.

  When we reached the town square, Jessie pointed and said, “Hey, isn’t that Luca?” I spotted him arguing with a tall, muscular guy in his early thirties. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was definitely an argument, judging by their body language and emphatic hand gestures. “Who’s he talking to?” Jessie asked.

  “No idea.”

  Luca yelled something and threw his hands in the air, then climbed into a waiting cab. It drove off in the opposite direction from which Jessie and I were approaching. The tall stranger, meanwhile, turned and entered the hotel lobby. “Should you maybe call Luca?” my friend asked. “He looked pretty upset.”

  I considered that before saying, “I’ll talk to him later. For now he probably needs some time to cool off.” Once inside the hotel, I looked around but didn’t see the man anywhere. I could only wonder what all of that had been about.

  *****

  When Nana and her sister and cousins returned from church (and shopping, lunch, and some more shopping), we all turned our attention to that night’s singles party. Nana and her family brainstormed ice breakers, Jessie handed out flyers in the piazza, and I began returning calls, because people kept phoning the hotel with questions about the event (the staff was getting a bit annoyed).

  Shortly before eight that night, all of us were showered and dressed up, including Nana. She wore a sparkly white suit, had put on a lot of red lipstick (some of it actually on her lips), and seemed giddy as a schoolgirl. A tall, thin guy in a dark blue suit came up to us and said hello. It took us a moment to recognize Rafi without his makeup. “I came straight from work,” he explained. He held a garment bag and a big makeup case, and said, “I need someplace to change. The rest of my dance troupe is right behind me, most of them need to get ready, too.”

  “Where do you work?” Jessie asked him.

  Rafael looked a bit embarrassed as he admitted, “I work in a funeral parlor, doing hair and makeup for our clients.”

  “Wow, how is that?”

  “Not bad. I know it sounds depressing, but it’s actually a pretty good job, and I get no complaints from my customers.” He grinned a little.

  Nana linked arms with him and said, “Come on, I’ll take you to my suite to change, then you can help me with my makeup, too. If you can make a corpse look good, just think what you can do with all of this to work with!”

  Giorgio was almost unrecognizable, too. He came up to Jessie dressed in a dirty pair of coveralls, and told me shyly in Italian, “I wanted to clean up after work, but Rafi told me I couldn’t be late. Jessie’s probably not going to like me now that he sees I’m just a mechanic and not glamourous at all.”

  When I repeated that to Jessie, he exclaimed, “Are you kidding? I love mechanics! I work on cars all the time! Tell him that. Or better yet, I’ll tell him.” He pulled up a translation app on his phone, typed something quickly and announced, “Io amo meccanica!” That made Giorgio smile. The two of them followed Nana and Rafi.

  That temporarily left me in charge, which became a little worrisome when I looked up and saw several dozen people heading for the bar. That was just the first wave. Twenty-somethings to eighty-somethings, gay and straight, they just kept coming. Fiona soon joined me, followed by Matteo and Allesso, and we all acted as greeters and started directing everyone out to the beach, since there was no way the bar could hold everyone.

  “Holy shit,” Matteo said at one point, “how many people is this? Two hundred? Three? What are we going to do with them?”

  Nana appeared at my elbow just then. Rafi had done a great job on her makeup, and she looked radiant. She said, “We’re going to get ‘em drunk, entertain ‘em, and try to make some love connections! Come on, boys!”

  The DJ she’d hired had moved from the bar to the beach, and began playing dance music as Rafi and his friends ran out and began performing. The wait staff looked like they were on the verge of panic, so Nana instructed them to bring up wine by the case. Once they did that, a couple waiters and I started filling dozens of glasses with wine, rather than trying to take individual orders. They were plucked off the long table before us as quickly as we filled them.

  The party just kept growing. It felt like it was right on the verge of careening wildly out of control. But somehow, by her sheer force of will, Nana held it all together.

  She’d hired a lot of entertainers, and instructed them to spread out along the beach. In addition to Rafi’s troupe, there was a mime, a clown making balloon animals, a magician, a sword swallower, a senior marching band (which ended up playing along with the DJ instead of competing with him), some fire dancers, and a group of acrobats. I had to chuckle as I took it all in.

  She climbed up on a table with the DJ’s microphone at one point and said in Italian, “Now look. You’re all here to meet people, so don’t be shy. You know what you want, so go find it! Everyone’s here for the same reason, just remember that. I’m gonna come down there in a minute and I’m going to help you out. But before I do, I’m gonna say one more thing. If you’re straight and a gay boy shows an interest in you, take it as a compliment! They got damn good taste, let me tell you. If you act like a shithead about it, you’ll have to answer to me!”

  Nana climbed off the table and started playing matchmaker on a massive scale. It reminded me of a giant game of Memory. She’d talk to one person, find out what they were looking for, and then lead (or sometimes drag) them up to someone in the crowd who she felt was a match. Most of the time, the two people in question would end up talking, and I saw plenty of phone numbers being exchanged.

  Of course she couldn’t get to the entire crowd that way, but then she had a flash of inspiration and put everyone to work doing the same thing. She pointed to a young man and yelled, “You! Go up to that woman in the green dress and find out what she wants! Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s someone else. Your job is to help her find whatever she’s looking for! Then after you help her, she can help you!” She started mobilizing blocks of people that way, and to my amazement, it actually seemed to work. A lot of people started talking, asking questions, and making introductions.

  When Nana sat down for a moment and kicked off her low heels, I brought her a glass of wine and told her as I sat beside her, “So many people are going to end up with a date or phone number, or even a new friend after this. I think what you’re doing is great.”

  She said, “Thanks, Sweetpea. So where’s your honey tonight? I thought Luca would be joining us.”

  “I have no idea, actually. I haven’t seen him all day.” I’d been trying not to worry since we’d never agreed on a specific time to meet, but he’d definitely been on my mind, especially after the incident I’d witnessed that morning.

  Nana patted my hand and said, “You got nothing to worry about with that one. It’s obvious the boy’s gaga over you. He probably just got tied up somewhere.”

  “Probably. So, what about you, Nana? You’ve been helping everyone else meet people tonight. Have you found yourself a silver fox?”

  “Nah. I don’t have time to think about me, not when there are so many lonely people here, all looking for love.” She tossed back the wine, then stuck her feet back in her shoes. “I gotta crank up the energy level of this party. A lot of people still need to make love connections, we can’t have it wind down yet.” Nana jumped up and bustled out into the crowd.

  Sometime later, Olivio Caravetti showed up. He was dressed in a grey wool three-piece suit and a fedora, and carried a bouquet of pink roses. I shook his hand and offered him a drink, and we chatted for a few minutes before he asked, “So, where’s this lady you want me to meet?”

  I craned my neck and scanned the crowd. “Nana’s around here somewhere….” All of a sudden a lot of cheering and applause broke out, and I said
, “I’ll bet that’s her.”

  We waded through the crowd and emerged to witness quite a spectacle. Nana had combined all the acts. The marching band was playing Thunderstruck by AC/DC while the DJ laid down an accompanying beat. The acrobats flipped across a makeshift stage, then started dancing with Rafi and his troupe. The mime, clown, magician, and sword swallower flanked Nana, doing their respective acts with gusto. And right in the middle of it all stood my grandmother and the fire dancers.

  They handed her a flaming baton, which looked like a giant Q-tip that had been ignited at both ends. Nana worked it like she was leading the Rose Parade. She didn’t really have the technique down, but what she lacked in skill she made up for with enthusiasm. One of them handed her a bottle, and I whispered, “Oh hell,” a moment before she took a big mouthful of liquid, held up the baton, and spewed a huge stream of fire into the night sky. The crowd went crazy, and fortunately Nana didn’t actually go up in flames.

  “What a woman,” Ollie said, taking off his fedora and smoothing his thick, white hair. “Please tell me that’s who you wanted me to meet.”

  “It is.”

  Nana kept waving the flaming baton around for a couple more minutes as she twerked with Rafi and the troupe. Finally, she handed it off to a muscular fire dancer in a loin cloth, slapped his ass, and left the stage. We went up to her, and I introduced the two of them. When my eyes went wide, she asked, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I told her, dragging my gaze away from the part of her forehead where her eyebrows used to be.

  She looked Ollie up and down before saying, “You’re kind of short.”

  “What, you want to date some big giant? You want to get a crimp in your neck every time you look at him? That’s just heightist. And you know, just because a fellow’s a tall drink of water doesn’t mean he’s packing a big straw, if you know what I mean,” he told her.

  Nana started to grin, but then she gave him a stern look and said, “You have a point there. You’re no spring chicken, though. I’m not sure you can keep up with me. The last thing I need is some old fart who’s gonna keel over the first time I get him in the sack.”

  “You got nothing to worry about there, sister,” he told her. “I’m like the Energizer bunny. You get with me, you’re gonna need a nap and a bowl of Wheaties afterwards to bounce back!”

  “You talk the talk, but I’m not convinced. You gotta know I’m not going to sit around playing bridge and acting like an old person. I need adventure and excitement! If you can bring that to the table, then I might consider going out with you.”

  He handed her the bouquet of roses and said, “These are for you. You’re sassy and I like that in a woman! You’re a real hottie, too. Now you just wait here and I’ll be right back. If you say you need convincing, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  He disappeared back into the crowd and Nana turned to me and said, “You think I need fixing up?”

  “Not at all. I just really liked Mr. Caravetti when I met him and thought you might, too.”

  “Well, thanks for sending him my way. He’s cute, I’ll give him that. But if he wants to go out with me, he needs to show me he’s really interested. After your granddad, I don’t want someone who’s lukewarm about me, I want some passion! He also needs to prove to me that he’s not gonna bore me to tears, and that the highlight of his day isn’t the early bird special, followed by falling asleep in front of Wheel of Fortune. That shit’s not gonna fly with me.”

  I was telling her about my afternoon with him and the fact that he used to own a gallery in New York when some shouting and a loud engine noise caught our attention. We were near the back of the hotel, and both of us leaned over and peered into the lobby. People were scurrying out of the way of something.

  In the next moment, Olivio appeared on a big, red and black Ducati motorcycle. He wasn’t going very fast, but he was driving it right through the hotel with his head held high. Half a dozen hotel employees were running after him and yelling, but he totally ignored them.

  When he pulled up in front of us, he handed Nana a white helmet. “Here you go, sexy, it matches your outfit. Now come on, let’s ride.”

  My grandmother handed me the flowers, put on the helmet, and hiked her skirt up before swinging a skinny leg over the motorcycle. “I like you, Ollie,” she said. “You got style.”

  “Right back at you, Stana,” he told her. She plucked one of the roses from the bouquet, stuck the stem between her teeth, and put her arms around his waist. Ollie gave me a little salute before swinging the bike around and driving right back through the lobby. The irate hotel employees had no choice but to jump out of the way.

  Jessie and Giorgio came up to me, and my friend asked, “Do you think he stole that motorcycle?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Should we be worried?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Nana can take care of herself. I’m going to run up to the suite and put her flowers in some water, I’ll be right back.”

  The top floor of the hotel was infinitely quieter than the extremely hectic party, and the silence felt like a relief when the elevator doors slid open. I’d almost reached my suite when someone grabbed my arm. I gasped and spun around, startled because I hadn’t heard anyone approaching.

  “Luca!” Something was wrong, I could tell right away. He pulled me into an embrace and held me for a long moment as I asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I have to go, mio tesoro. I’m so sorry. I wanted that weekend with you more than anything.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Rome. Where are you staying when you get there?”

  “The St. Regis.”

  He kissed me and said, “I’ll find you. I promise.”

  “Can I call you?”

  “It’s really important that you don’t.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s happening, Luca?”

  He cupped my cheek in his hand and met my gaze. “I can’t explain. Please, just trust me.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  He kissed me, then stepped back with heartbreak in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Nicky,” he said before running down the hall and disappearing through the door to the stairwell. All I could do was stand there staring after him, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  Chapter Eight

  I tried not to think about Luca every minute of every day, and did my best to distract myself. I spent time with Jessie, Nana and Ollie. I visited relatives. I swam and ate and did some shopping and tried to enjoy my vacation. But I was going through the motions. I knew it and everyone else did, too.

  On our last night in Viladembursa, Nana hosted a dinner at a local restaurant. Dozens of family members showed up. Jessie stayed for part of it, then went off with Giorgio. The two of them had seen each other three times over the last week, but I got the impression they were friends more than anything.

  Meanwhile, Nana and Ollie had gone out every night. He even got one of his friends to watch the gallery and planned to join us in Rome. It was nice to see my grandmother so happy, even though she told me, “I’ve been burned once before, so I’m taking this slow. Ollie’s got to prove to me that he can be trusted with my heart.”

  When we left the restaurant, Fiona kissed both my cheeks and promised to email soon. She’d gotten four phone numbers at Nana’s party and seemed really excited about one of the men in particular. Remy and his wife carried their three sleeping kids. They wished me safe travels, and made me promise to come back soon. Matteo hugged me goodbye and said he’d come visit me in San Francisco the following summer. His ever-present bestie Allessandro shook my hand and promised to tag along and pretend he was part of the family. He didn’t really have to pretend.

  Ollie took Nana for a nightcap, and I walked the few blocks back to the hotel. I didn’t go inside, though. Instead, I sat on the edge of the fountain and watched the celestial rodeo.

  And of course, I thought about Luca. To
me, that would always be our spot. It would have been wonderful if he suddenly reappeared and kissed me and explained what had been going on with him. We could have picked up right where we left off. But maybe I was the only one who wanted that.

  I was baffled by his sudden departure. Why would a man call me ‘my treasure’ (mio tesoro), and then tell me not to call him? Why would he refuse to offer any explanations for skipping out on our plans? It wasn’t as if he was a spy and had been handed an exploding envelope with a top secret mission. He bought paintings for spoiled, rich people. How urgent could that possibly be? Or if it wasn’t job-related, what the hell was it, and why couldn’t he just tell me what had called him away?

  Jessie joined me after a while, sitting beside me and looking up at the fountain. Eventually he asked, “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “Constantly. I wish I didn’t, though.”

  “He might have a really good reason for taking off the way he did.”

  “Possibly. But maybe it would have been an idea to tell me what it was.” I turned to look at my friend and asked, “Did Giorgio take off?”

  “Yeah, he needed to get home to Catania.”

  “Do you think you’ll see him again?”

  “Maybe. We’re going to keep in touch. He says he wants to come to the U.S. next year and that he’ll visit me.”

  “Do you think it could ever be serious between you two?”

  Jessie shook his head. “Giorgio’s a good friend, but that’s about it. He’s one of those guys who can’t imagine why anyone would settle down with just one person. I’m the exact opposite. I don’t see why anyone would want to sleep with a different guy every night of the week.”

  “You got all that, even with your language barrier?”

  “Yeah.” As I stood up and stretched, Jessie asked, “Are you going to miss Viladembursa?”

  I nodded. “I know I’ll be back, I just don’t know when.”

  “I’m going to miss it, too. Being here felt good.” He got up too and we both took a last look at the fountain before turning and heading to the hotel. “Well, onward and upward to the next adventure. I’m excited about seeing Rome. Will you be my tour guide if Nana ends up distracted by Olivio?”